This article presents and discusses the educational offers for newly arrived immigrant and refugee children and adolescents in Denmark. It analyses both policies that outline newcomers’ educational options and implemented newcomer education models,including Danish as a second language and mother tongue based education, from a perspective of equality in access to and participation in education and equality of participation in society through education. Furthermore, it contains an overview of Danish research on newcomers’ education. We conclude, that the field is undertheorised,
compared to other Nordic country’s advances in the field, and that dominant assimilationist educational policies towards ethnic minorities in general, and their one-sided focus on newcomers’ lack of Danish language proficiency, have left little space for newcomer educational models that take into account the newcomer students’ overall knowledge and competences.
Keywords: newly arrived students; newcomer education; asylum children; Danish as second language; Danish compulsory school; migrant education;